In the electronics industry, manufacturers and developers have sought to increase product performance, speed and capacity, as well as the profits derived therefrom, through miniaturization. Likewise, the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and related industries have sought similar benefits through miniaturization and automation of operations and processes performed in those industries. Performance of more and more operations in less and less space has thus become of primary interest in these industries. Space, therefore, while perhaps not the final frontier, remains an area that invites substantial exploitation.
To achieve this miniaturization the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries have recently applied some of the same technologies which proved effective in the electronics industry, such as photolithography, wet chemical etching, laser ablation, etc., to the microfabrication of fluidic devices for use in chemical and biological applications. For example, as early as 1979, researchers reported the fabrication of a miniature gas chromatograph on a silicon wafer (discussed in Manz et al., Adv. in Chromatog. (1993) 33:1-66, citing Terry et al., IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices (1979) ED-26:1880). These fabrication technologies have since been applied to the production of more complex devices for a wider variety of applications.
Some examples of microfluidic devices and systems for performing complex reactions, analyses and syntheses are described in, e.g., Published International Application No. WO 98/00231, WO 98/22811, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,779,868 and 5,858,195, each of which is incorporated herein by reference. Many of the systems developed to date operate by serially introducing samples into a particular analysis channel, wherein the samples are individually analyzed. Higher throughput systems are generally provided by multiplexing the basic system, i.e., incorporating multiple identical analysis channels in parallel, each channel having a separate sample introduction port. In order to further enhance throughput of these systems, systems that are capable of translating serially input compounds into a number of parallel channels for analysis have been developed. These systems are generally termed “serial to parallel converters.” Generally, such systems are described in detail in commonly owned Published International Application No. 98/22811, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Despite the development of these systems, it would generally be desirable to provide such systems with enhanced throughput by allowing each analysis unit, e.g., an analysis channel, to be applied to multiple serial analyses of different samples, as well as enhanced control of materials during the serial to parallel conversion process. The present invention meets these and a variety of other needs.